Assessing possible impact of school closures - Future challenges for the profession - Our Profession

2 Assessing possible impact of school closures

19 Mar, 2020 16:33

Like most companies I expect, we have people working from home in large numbers now. With the school closures from the end of this week, is it ok to ask employees if they have school age children or caring responsibilities? I don't anticipate there being an issue if we're asking and not insisting?

The reason behind the request is that we'd like to be able to assess who has caring responsibilities so we can prioritise who works from home. In our business we need a skeleton staff on site.

Thanks

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Gemma | 0 Posts

19 Mar, 2020 18:20

hi Jackie, at my company we are all working from home. so with the school closures this means that some people's working availability is going to be impacted. we have kindly asked them to complete a Google form to confirm what they expect the impact to be. Will they be available 100%, more than 50%, less than 50% or 0% of the time. This is so that we can inform our clients and plan the workload or cover if needed. Thankfully we are in a position to continue to pay employees, no matter their availability. we have found that most are available 100% or more than 50% of the time.
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Elizabeth Divver | 0 Posts

19 Mar, 2020 19:41

Hi Jackie

Even though it ought to be glaringly obvious why you are asking, I would preface your question with a very clear statement that you are doing this to assess the impact of school closures.
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